Every day, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza publishes a bulletin of the number of people killed and wounded in Gaza over the previous 24 hours and updates the total number of casualties since October 7. Today’s report shows 24 Palestinians killed and 85 wounded, bringing the totals to 41,495 and 96,006, respectively.
The ministry also works to keep track of the names, ages, ID numbers, and other biographical data of those killed, periodically making its latest list public. The most recent published list includes biographical information for 34,344 Palestinians killed between October 7 and August 31—with the important caveat that there are over 6,000 more confirmed dead that the ministry had not been able to successfully identify.
The fact that the Health Ministry manages to gather, verify, and publish this data on a rolling basis is extraordinary. Michael Spagat, a Professor of Economics at the University of London whose research focuses on armed conflict and measurement of war deaths, told Drop Site News: “It’s very significant that [the Gaza health ministry] is making their data available and it’s highly unusual. As a consequence we understand the death toll in the Gaza war better than we do in almost all wars of the past few decades.” ….more
